Prologue
Above the Podkannaya Tuguska River
Russian Empire
June 30, 1908
His skin was wreathed in flames, burning red and yellow, as he streaked across the early morning sky. Aleksandr Timofeyevich Gavrikov was not yet eighteen. I can’t believe I killed her, he thought. I have done murder.
The air felt cold in spite of the fact that his skin was covered by a solid inch of fire. How is that possible? he wondered. The wind that whipped across his face did not affect the flames. This is unlike anything I have ever seen...unlike anything Father has ever seen too, I think...The smell of rank, stale water rose up from below him in the swamps. A river cut the land, the shine of the rising sun refracting off it. He was several hundred feet up, flying—as though I were a bird, he thought. Without flapping my arms, I can fly! Just like Father.
He felt a thrum in his heart at that thought. He will hurt me for this; worse than he ever has before. Perhaps things would have been different if mother had lived, he thought for the thousandth time, then dismissed it. I am on fire and flying through the air and I have done murder. Had mother lived long enough to see this, the shock would have killed her.
Seventeen years, he reflected. Seventeen years of hell for me and Klementina. But no more. The flames on his skin burned brighter as he thought about it, of all the abuses, the beatings, the nights he heard Klementina squealing and crying when their father went to her—
The flames that covered him changed, grew hotter. The cold air was warming around him, and he hovered a few feet above the water, staring at himself, his reflection, in the river below. How many times, Klementina? How many times did he hurt you? He and Klementina were forced to stay on the farm on all but the rarest of occasions. His sister was fair—beautiful, he thought. More beautiful than the peasant girls he had seen when they had gone into Kirensk. Her green eyes were hued with some blue, and her skin was tanned and freckled. Her blond hair hung about her shoulders as she carried buckets of water in from the well. She was far, far more beautiful than the girls he had seen in Kirensk.
He drifted close to the surface of the water, looking at himself. No skin was visible; he was a glowing fire, shaped like a man. What...am I? Even Father does not burst into flames when he flies...
“Aleksandr!” The word crackled through the air, and panic ran through him. He whipped his head around to see his father flying toward him from above, eyes narrowed, his teeth bared in rage.
I will get such a beating for this, Aleksandr thought. I will be chained and locked in the shed for a week.
He remembered the time when he’d had courage. A year earlier he had awoken to hear Klementina crying, his father slapping her in the only bedroom of their farmhouse. It happened so often, and every night it had, he turned over, shut his eyes tight, and covered his ears with his old, threadbare pillow. It almost shut out the cries of his sister and the primal, disgusting grunts of his father.
He had thought he couldn’t bear it any longer. He had run into the room in the middle of the night and grasped his father by the shoulders, throwing him off Klementina. She huddled, clutching a sheet to her, moaning and sobbing, her eyes wide with fear. The first two punches had been so satisfying; he heard his father’s nose break, watched the blood run down his lip. Then the drunken eyes had focused on him, and his father had brought a hand across his face in fury.
Aleksandr had gone flying across the room. After landing, he could dimly hear Klementina crying, saw her covering herself with the blanket as his father approached him. He could smell the awful night smells, the stink of sweat and fear. The blood was slick and running across his eye as his father leaned down to him. With another punch, everything went dark.
When he awoke, it was midday, hot, and he was chained to a stake in the middle of the shed. No water, no food, until after dark when Klementina came to him, bringing him some crumbs of supper and something to drink. Her eyes were black and swollen, and a trail of dried blood led from one of her nostrils to her upper lip.
He had not intervened since.
“Aleksandr!” The shout came again, and Aleksandr turned, blasting away from the river, up into the air above. The chill was back, the coolness of early morning, but this time it was fused with the tickle of the flames that wreathed him. His father was following, he knew. He won’t let me go. Not after what I’ve done.
He climbed higher and higher in the sky, felt the chill increase. He looked down, and the Tunguska River was so far below that it was but a line. He felt the flames start to die, saw his skin peeking out from beneath the place where the fire had burned so hard only a minute earlier. He’ll catch me. He’ll lock me away. I won’t be able to stop him.
The air was thin, and he couldn’t breathe. He gasped for breath, but it didn’t seem to help. He looked back; father was gaining on him, coming up behind him, his face fixed, eyes blazing in a way that told Aleksandr that this might be the last time...
He felt his father’s hand close around his arm, felt it tighten, then felt the bone crack, and Aleksandr Timofeyevich Gavrikov tried to cry out with a breath he didn’t have. His father had broken his arm, and the excruciating sensation felt as though someone had jammed a knife into his upper arm and twisted. He felt the pull of his father’s strength, dragging him down, down, down. He fought, he struggled, but without breath he failed, sagging. He was pulled down, and after a moment he felt his breath return, felt the chill start to fade.
Felt the heat under his skin return.
“You have killed her!” His father’s words were barely audible over the wind as they descended. “Your sister is dead because of you!”
“I did not mean to,” Aleksandr’s words came out ragged. “She touched me and...”
“You killed her,” his father said again, and backhanded him across the face with his free hand. The smell of the swamp water below reminded him of the night smells, of the fear.
The heat under Aleksandr’s skin grew, his breaths grew deeper and less forced. He beats me during the day and tortures Klementina at night. “You will never be able to hurt her again.”
Another backhand was his reward. “I never hurt her!”
“You hurt her all the time.” Aleksandr heard a menace in his own voice that had never been there before. It reminded him of the time he’d had courage. The heat underneath his skin was unbearable; it was burning, aching to get out. “I may have killed her this morning, but you have killed her every night since she was a girl.”
“LIAR!” His father struck him again, and the heat became intense within him. His eyes were burning, his skin was burning, and suddenly it was on fire again, and his flesh was covered in flames. “What...?!”
His father yelped and his hand withdrew. Aleksandr felt himself fall for a second before he took over and felt the power of his own flight return. He hovered a few feet from his father, staring at the old man with unfettered contempt. “You have flown for as long as I can remember, Father.” The menace was there. The courage was in his voice. His father was cradling his hand, a blackened, burned husk of what it had been: a strong, powerful limb that he used to beat his children. “It appears that I have taken more from you than I would have imagined.”
“You are my son,” came the ghostly reply.
“I am not. I am my mother’s son.” He felt the heat, still under his skin, even as the fire raged on top of it. “I am my sister’s brother. I am Aleksandr; not Timofeyevich nor Gavrikov, because I want nothing of yours that I don’t need.” Without hesitation he flew at his father, slammed into him, and the searing under his skin unleashed as they fell toward the earth below. Seventeen years of hell, he thought, and it all came out at once—a torrent of rage, fire, flame, an explosion of his anger. He watched his father’s skin blacken, his eyes disappear in the initial flash of heat, watched his flesh burn away, then the bone turn to ash and then dust.
The world went white all around, the trees below were like little piece
s of tinder in the wind, picked up and flung through the air, the landscape flattening for miles in every direction. A screeching sound filled his ears, and cracks like thunder went off one after another.
When it was all over, Aleksandr Timofeyevich Gavrikov was no more.
And Aleksandr flew off, taking the only thing of his father’s that he wanted.
The gift of flight.